Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow—but only when those acorns are planted in the right location. By the same token, choosing the right route was critical in order for a railroad to get underway and stay solvent. Failing at this critical task would likely cause it to go under. Construction costs needed to be weighed against future ease of operation and profitability when choosing the route. The amount of stock that could be sold along a given line was also a factor. And with resources being scarce, as they were at this time in Wisconsin, choosing a route that could be built cheaply and quickly in order to start bringing in revenues as soon as possible was also paramount.
On June 4, 1849, the Milwaukee and Waukesha's stockholders met in the new Board of Trade building in Milwaukee to address the plan devised by Byron Kilbourn, E. B. Walcott, and Edward Holton. They first decided on the location of the terminal points in Milwaukee and Waukesha and ordered surveys done for the first division. These surveys would help them determine a route between the termini. The directors also increased the company's capital stock to five hundred thousand dollars. To expedite the surveys, the company's board of directors
adopted the most ready and effective means of organizing a suitable Corps of Engineers, by appointing the President of the Company to be Chief Engineer, and authorizing the employment of such assistants and laborers as might be necessary to conduct the field surveys and prepare the line of the road for construction at the earliest practicable period.1
Choosing the president of the company to serve as its chief engineer as well was unusual, but Kilbourn appeared to be the person best qualified for both jobs. He had learned surveying from his father at an early age and had for eight years been a surveyor and resident engineer on the state of Ohio's canal projects. He had superintended the building of Ohio's Milan Ship Canal. And he had helped survey the 52-mile route of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal. The railroad industry was still in its infancy, and Wisconsin did not have a single railroad engineer at this time, so a qualified canal engineer was the next best thing2
By this time several routes had been identified between Milwaukee and Waukesha. One of these, the southern route, followed the town line between towns six and seven (along today's Greenfield Avenue) straight west to Waukesha. Another possibility, the northern route, followed the valleys of the Menomonee and Fox Rivers to Waukesha. There were also several routes in between. The directors decided that all of these options should be examined.
On the morning of June 7, engineers Kilbourn, Benjamin H. Edgerton, and Jesper Vliet assembled their crews in Milwaukee at the junction of the Milwaukee and Menomonee Rivers. This beginning point was ideal for several reasons. The land situated at the northwest corner of the junction had been donated to the project, and it had already been determined that the station grounds and depot would lie there. The Milwaukee River would allow vessels on Lake Michigan to access the company's docks, and the valley of the Menomonee River would provide a rail route inland.
Moving west from the meeting point, the survey parties covered the country between the villages along the Menomonee, a process that took several weeks. The directors would report that these surveys were “very minutely made over every part of the intervening country.”3 Though thorough, these surveys were preliminary, and were meant only to give a general understanding of the proposed routes' topography. They lacked the detailed measurements of final surveys.
Elevations, even on preliminary surveys, were measured with care. With Waukesha 225 feet higher than Milwaukee, choosing the best climb was important. If a climb was too steep, trains would have to be shortened, lightened, or use helper locomotives. But a gentler route sometimes meant a route that was excessively long and had too many curves. An acceptable balance was found by measuring elevations, a procedure known as “running levels.” An axe man, two rod men, and an instrument man would start at the beginning of the line, where the elevation was already known. One rod man would proceed to a forward position, the axe man clearing the way as necessary, while the instrument man would set up his equipment between the two. His instrument, known as a level, was a telescope with an attached bubble level mounted on a tripod. Once in position, it was then simply a matter of sighting on the first rod to establish the elevation of the instrument, then sighting on the forward rod to establish that rod's elevation. The rear rod man then moved ahead to a new forward position, the instrument man moved to a new midway point, and a second level reading was taken. The procedure was repeated over many miles with little loss of accuracy4
Kilbourn chose his preferred route based on these first levels, writing in the annual company report, “I superintended them in person for some two weeks or more, until I learned, by levels taken, the general features of the country, and recommended the adoption of a line between the present road and one further south.”5 His surveyors would work several more weeks before finishing and filing their reports. Kilbourn, in the meantime, had been called back to the never ending task of selling stock subscriptions.
Beginning in late June 1849, Kilbourn traveled west to the country around the Rock River, “preaching the Railroad to the unbelievers and endeavoring to convince the people that it was in their interest to subscribe to the Stock of the Company”6 His target audience was farmers, who made up four fifths of the company's stockholders. He offered them several reasons to underwrite the enterprise. The investment itself would be repaid, he claimed, with interest, and the cost of hauling their wheat to market would also drop. Milwaukee's Daily Wisconsin backed up his offer:
A word to Wheat Growers—Saving of transportation on a Railroad—During the week … at least 100,000 bushels of wheat were brought into this city by [wagon] teams … Most of the wheat comes from a distance of from fifteen to one hundred and twenty miles … allowing the average cost … 12½ cents per bushel … by railroad, 7 cents per bushel … such a saving would build a road which the people might own in a few years.7
Another advantage was that the value of the farmer's land would increase. According to the October 26 Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, “Every Farmer who subscribes $500 to this great State enterprise would receive back more than that sum in the increased value of his Real Estate, in consequence of the construction of the Road.”8
Yet many farmers remained skeptical. They saw that the railroad would have a monopoly on their business and thus be in a position to charge excessive tolls. Railroads were corporations, which to many people meant large, faceless entities that would ignore them when they voiced their needs. Director Edward D. Clinton had addressed these concerns in a letter published June 6, 1849, in the Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, first acknowledging the farmer's concerns and then assuring them of the value—and necessity—of taking out stock in the company:
The interests of farmers have always been subject to a ruinous monopoly, which monopoly, as used by the capitalists, has always been diametrically opposed to the ultimate success of the farmer. No one will for a moment contend that we have not had to contend with this monopoly; and yet the farmers of this country are those who hold the power to do away with this burden upon their energies… . The design of this railroad is ultimately to benefit the farmers of the country, in common with our commercial interests; and how is this to be effected? The farmer owning stock owns also a share in each depot on the line, and the person who has the charge of the depot is his agent. Now supposing your agent in Milwaukee telegraphs to any agent on the line where your wheat is stored, that wheat buyers will give so much for a boat load of wheat; the cars will deposit that wheat in Milwaukee in six hours at the farthest from the time the order was received. Thus you will, by taking stock in this railroad, ruin this accursed monopoly, and at the same time obtain the highest price for your wheat… . The railroad must be built, and it remains for you to say whether the stock-holders shall consist of enterprising farmers or eastern capitalists. If you refuse to take stock, there is no alternative—eastern capital will step in and we shall forever be cursed with monopolies… . Let every farmer who has the interest of the farming community at heart step in ere it is too late.9
Clinton and Kilbourn's work was well rewarded. The company's largest sale of stock occurred on July 19. On that day Milwaukee's city council members voted twelve to one to subscribe to one hundred thousand dollars' worth of the company's stock, as allowed by the recent state law.10 The city would borrow money to pay for the subscription, then pay for the loan with a one percent property tax. City residents who paid property tax would receive receipts that could be exchanged for actual railroad stock. In other words, they would be taxed to finance a private corporation that was expected to benefit all.11
On July 30 the directors met to review the survey reports submitted by Kilbourn. His recommended middle route had lost favor with the directors, who now favored either the northern or southern routes. Waukesha was 16.6 miles from Milwaukee as the crow flies. The more direct southern route added only one mile to that distance. But it traversed an up and down terrain that would be expensive to build on. The circuitous northern route added four miles, but utilized river valleys that were cheaper to build in. Detailed surveys with cost estimates were called for. Kilbourn would recall:
I put two parties into the field; Mr. B. H. Edgerton having charge of that on the Southern route, and Mr. Richard E Morgan of that on the Northern route, with instructions to each to run and report on their respective lines as soon as they could. They were both experienced in running lines, and especially Mr. Morgan.12
Edgerton, an engineer in the preliminary survey, had long been active in Milwaukee's civic affairs. A member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, he had been a foreman for Milwaukee's volunteer fire department and had served on the town council and the harbor committee. Earlier in 1849, when Kilbourn's term as mayor of Milwaukee ended, Edgerton had run for that office as a member of the People's Party, but had been defeated by Democrat Don A. J. Upham. Now he was faced with the difficult job of surveying the southern, or “town line,” route to Waukesha.
Morgan, who was surveying the northern route, had joined the Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Mississippi River engineering corps (as they were informally known) during the preliminary surveys in June. He was a civil engineer with substantial railroad experience. He had worked for the Hudson River Railroad in New York and had supervised surveys of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, a project that had brought him a great deal of familiarity with the terrain of northern Illinois. The directors of the Galena had liked his estimate of $14,553 per mile and his reduced figure of $8,000 per mile if secondhand strap rail—the thin iron strip that was nailed onto the wooden beams that connected to the ties—was used. The Galena had purchased the strap rail and Morgan had stayed on to helping during the summer of 1848, laying the first rails out of Chicago. Morgan was the only person with the Milwaukee and Waukesha with prior railroad experience. Despite this, he was made responsible for the survey of the easier northern route.13
These surveys of the northern and southern routes would be final—the directors and engineers assumed that the railroad would be built on one of the lines being measured. With compass and transit (a surveyor's instrument for measuring horizontal and vertical angles), the surveyors broke the route into straight lines called courses. Axe men would clear as needed in order for the surveyors to take sights. Chain men with one-hundred-foot-long engineering chains measured the courses, driving stakes at two-hundred-foot intervals to mark “stations.” Levelers measured the elevation of each station. Transit men followed, measuring the angles where courses changed direction and laying in curves to smooth them. Engineers calculated the volumes of earth that would have to be removed from cuts or dumped in fills and calculated the distances the earth would need to be moved.14
Edgerton soon realized that following a straight line, the southern route incurred too many obstacles. It would consequently be too costly to build along that path.15 Meanwhile, Morgan, ascending the Menomonee River valley, found the grades favorable. His concern was that many curves would be required. Ten miles from Milwaukee, Morgan ran the line northward, into the valley of Underwood's Run (a tributary of the Menomonee River) to maintain grade in climbing the Niagara Escarpment (a limestone formation found in eastern Wisconsin, the Door Peninsula, and Canada; it also underlies Niagara Falls). In southeastern Wisconsin, this escarpment forms the divide from which waters run either east to Lake Michigan or west to the Mississippi River. Morgan and his men crossed this divide near Brookfield, then descended seven miles along the Fox River to Waukesha.
With the surveys complete, the time had come to finalize the route. To this end, six of the company's nine directors—Kilbourn, Holton, Lemuel Weeks, John Tweedy, Anson Eldred, and Alexander Mitchell—met in Milwaukee on September 22. As chief engineer, Kilbourn presented the survey reports accompanied by large-scale plats, profiles (maps showing ascents, levels, and descents of the line), and construction estimates. The directors took time to study these. Then Mitchell, the youngest, proposed a resolution that “the route passing through the valley of the Menomonee and Fox Rivers, and denominated the north route, as the same has been amended and perfected by Messrs. Morgan and Vliet, be adopted as the route of the Railroad from Milwaukee to Waukesha.”16 At two o'clock in the afternoon the board adopted this resolution and the line was fixed. The northern route would be used for Wisconsin's first railroad.
It was fitting that Mitchell, who would later in life be in charge of more miles of railroad than anyone at the meeting, would play such an important role in the beginnings of Wisconsin's first railroad. Born in Scotland, he had come to America in 1839 as an employee of a Scottish banking firm. He was soon put in charge of one of their ventures, the Wisconsin Marine and Fire Insurance Company of Milwaukee. On October 6, 1841, Mitchell married Martha Reed of Milwaukee, a “dashing equestrienne who had one day caught his eye as she rode along a Milwaukee path.” When he joined the directorate of the Milwaukee and Waukesha Railroad Company, he was already recognized as the state's leading financial authority with over one million dollars of the Wisconsin Marine and Fire Insurance Company's certificates of deposit circulating in the state as currency.17
One week later the stockholders met at Barstow's Hotel in Waukesha to settle the location of the depot at that end of the route. Had the southern route been chosen, it would have been placed on the eastern side of the Fox River, but instead it was placed on the western.18
At the end of the year, President Kilbourn, writing his annual report to the stockholders, understandably praised the route to excess, saying it was
a line of almost unrivalled excellence in its principal features of grades, curves and cost. The maximum grades ascending westward (or from the Lake) being twenty-five feet to the mile; the maximum grades ascending eastward (or towards the Lake) being only six feet to the mile; and few of the curves being less than three thousand feet radius, presents in these respects an unusually fine line; and what is perhaps of equal importance, these advantages are all obtained on a line of rare cheapness of construction. On the whole line, there is not a deep cut, nor high embankment—not a yard of rock excavation—but few bridges, and those of small dimensions and cheap structures; and a general absence of all those expensive items which constitute the bulk of the cost of Rail roads in eastern states.19
The route was criticized by some because of the many curves necessary, but Kilbourn adamantly defended the choice:
This line is as straight as it could be consistently with its general design, which was to follow the valleys of the Menomonee and Underwood's Run, and of the Fox River. The object in following these valleys was to obtain easy grades and a cheap line. We could not run a straight line in a crooked valley; and our only alternative was, either to take this, with its curves, or take a straighter but more expensive line, over the table land. The question was one of policy, and the Board decided in accordance with true policy, beyond a doubt. Had we taken the other route, with our feeble means, we should have failed before we reached Waukesha; and the predictions of the faithless would have been verified by our failure, and our enterprise would have been stigmatized, as it had already been, as a Milwaukee humbug. We took the course of prudence, and adopted the cheapest and most feasible route.20
Kilbourn's comments capture a dilemma faced by many railroad builders in nineteenth-century America: that there was a trade-off between the cost of building a railroad and the cost of operating it. A company with ample resources could build a straight, evenly graded line that would cost little to run on. But few companies had such resources when starting out. So they built their lines as quickly and cheaply as possible. Later, when trains were running and money was coming in, they could try to improve them.